Friday, April 13, 2012

Orcs Must Die! (PC)

Rating: 4 out of 5

Pros: A fun spin on a tower defense game with great audio and visuals

Cons: No multiplayer or endless mode to keep you playing after finishing it

Orcs Must Die! is an action/strategy tower defense game from Robot Entertainment
where the goal is to go through each level killing and destroying "The
Mob" of Orcs and their allies. You play as an apprentice of "The Order"
who is tasked with protecting fortresses built in the dead world of the
Orcs and the magical rifts inside. The Orcs wish to use these rifts to
travel to other worlds so they can plunder and ravage them, and it's up
to you to stop them using any means necessary. I picked the game up
because it looked a little bit similar to Dungeon Defenders, which I really like, and I was not disappointed.

To accomplish this hefty feat you can use a number of different devices
-- including up to 6 different weapons; 17 various floor, wall and
ceiling traps, and 2 distinct guardians to aid you. You start off with a
magical crossbow, a bladestaff, a tar trap and a spike trap. You also
start out with 4 empty places in your spell book (basically your quick
action bar of hot keys), which allows you to add all of your available
weapons and traps to it and use them right away; you can only use
devices that are added to your spell book at the beginning of a level.
Every level you finish unlocks an additional device, and sometimes adds
another empty spot to your spell book (to a maximum of 10, mapped to the
number keys 1-0).

Since you can't have everything available
all at once for most of the game, you have to pick and choose what you
want to bring into each level. Some levels don't have much in the way of
ceiling space, for example, so you would naturally want to avoid
wasting your space by bringing any ceiling-mounted traps. Likewise, if
you fill up your entire spell book with traps then you have no room left
to bring any other weapons or guardians to the fight (though you'll
always have the crossbow, as it's locked into the first slot).

As you progress through the game, you are awarded skulls based on how
well you do in each level. You can obtain up to 5 skulls at the end of a
level, and these skulls can be used to permanently upgrade one of your
devices to make it cheaper, stronger, or have some type of additional
effect. Since there are a limited number of skulls in total you can not
upgrade everything, so upgrading what you use most based on your play
style is key to getting the most use out of them.

The weapons can
do various things like shoot fireballs, ice bolts or chain lightning.
Weapons also have an alternate fire mode that you can use with a right
click rather than the usual left click. The alternate fire mode of the
regular crossbow is a small area of effect stun attack, while the
alternate fire mode of the bladestaff is a frontal knockback attack.
These alternate fire modes are pretty varied between weapons, and one
even lets you pick enemies up and throw them at other enemies. I most
often find myself using the fire gauntlet to throw a fireball at a group
of enemies, but the alternate mode lets me lay down a small flame wall
that incinerates enemies who walk over it for a brief time and it's a
godsend in certain situations. Most weapons cost mana to fire, except
for the crossbow and bladestaff which only require mana to use their
alternate fire modes. Mana does regenerate itself over time, but not
exceptionally fast so you have to make sure to save some for when you
need it.

The traps you can use are pretty diverse and fun, and
while there are too many to talk about specifically I'll list a few
examples and some of my favorites. Floor traps include spikes that pop
out of the floor, magma that burns enemies, or even giant springs that
can launch enemies over a ledge into some lava. Wall traps feature
arrows that fly out of the wall, grinders that suck in enemies, or axes
that chop enemies up as they walk by. The grinder and the axe trap are
both short range, but you can use the barricade floor trap to force
enemies to walk beside them and put slowing tar traps on the floor
underneath them to make the enemies stay there next to them for an
extended period of time and take a load of damage. Ceiling traps can
swing a giant spiked mace back and forth or even spew lightning at
incoming enemies.

Guardians are totally different than traps.
While there are only 2 different guardians to choose from, they both
fill different roles and you can place some of each if you have them
both in your spell book. Granted, there's a limit of like 10 or 12
guardians you can place on any given level, but I almost always max them
out just for their utility. The archer guardian will shoot down flying
enemies before it will plink away at the normal ground enemies your
traps will take care of, and it's nearly ridiculous to have a pile of
archers on a ledge overlooking a large portion of the map. While they're
not as strong as you are, in numbers they are quite lethal. The paladin
guardian is nearly as good, but he is a melee tank type of guardian who
will stand there and fight a number of Orcs at once and keep them busy
for a while.

I like to take a choke point where the enemies
can be funneled into, and line it with grinders or axes on the walls. I
put tar along in front of them to keep the enemies there for a while,
and place brimstone just before it to catch the enemies on fire. A
swinging mace on the ceiling, and maybe a turret/ballista trap off to
the side on the ceiling and not much can make it through. Just for
overkill though, I like to use a pile of archer guardians behind my trap
setup to pelt everything with arrows while it's already getting
demolished (unless it's a map with flying enemies, in which case my
archers are positioned somewhere that allows them to clean those guys up
for me while I focus on the ground).

Placing traps or
guardians costs various amounts of money. You start off with a fixed
number of coins and earn more by killing Orcs. Getting kill streaks by
killing many Orcs in a row increases the amount of money you earn, so
it's important to try for them -- especially early when you don't have
many traps set yet. Sometimes an enemy will drop a coin on the map in
addition to the coins you get from killing him, and picking it up also
gives you additional money. This happens most often with the bigger
enemies like Ogres, who take a lot of damage before dying and also hit
pretty hard should they get near you. In addition to the coin, enemies
can also drop health potions that restore your health when you step on
them.

A little while into the game you also obtain "Weavers",
which basically serve as the tech tree in the game. They are some type
of magical creature that will allow you to spend coins to upgrade
certain abilities or traps. There are 3 different Weavers which are like
different skill trees; the Elemental, Steel and Knowledge Weavers. The
first lets you increase your weapon abilities -- like adding flame to
your crossbow shots or making your frost spells last longer. The second
upgrades your traps and guardians by allowing traps to reset faster or
guardians to have extra health and regenerate any they lose. This one is
my personal favorite; I always purchase the ability that allow me to
gain extra coins from Orcs killed by my traps and guardians, as well as
the one letting my archer guardians gain flame arrows.

The
last Weaver is probably the best all around one, even though I don't use
it often. It has some nice abilities like gaining 20% run speed or
letting trap kills restore 5% of your mana. Each of the Weavers has 3
tiers of abilities, with 1-4 abilities in each tear. While you can only
use one of these 3 Weavers at a time, the abilities you purchase from
them only last for one level so you can choose a different one every
time if you like. Using the right Weaver for your play style and trap
usage is immensely helpful, especially later in the game.

There are 24 different fortresses to defend. They all feature different
layouts, some with stairs and multiple floors, some with cathedral
ceilings so there's limited room for ceiling traps, etc. Some levels
also have natural traps such as suspended logs that you can knock down
to roll over enemies or chandeliers that you can shoot off of the
ceiling to crush enemies. One annoying thing in some levels is the fact
that you can fall from a ledge into oblivion and die, which really irks
me sometimes. Maybe I should just pay more attention to my surroundings,
but I always hate things like that in games.

There are a couple of DLC (Downloadble Content) packs available for Orcs Must Die!, which are only a couple dollars each. The Artifacts of Power DLC adds 2 additional weapons as well as 2 additional traps with upgrades. The other DLC is the Lost Adventures,
and it adds 5 new fortresses, 2 new enemies as well as a new wall trap
that can restore a player's mana. The DLC packs, as well as the game
itself, are reasonably priced -- but if you're patient you can find them
all on Steam for sale for %50 to %75 off. That's when I picked
up my copy, and I paid a whopping $4.99 for the game along with both
expansion packs.

Unlike traditional tower defense games which are often played using a top-down overhead view, Orcs Must Die! brings you closer to the action by using a third-person view from behind the main character (much like Max Payne or Syphon Filter).
Everything is well modeled in 3D, with crisp and colorful textures and
the entire game looks terrific. Animations are fluid and smooth, every
trap looks totally distinct and there are a dozen different types of
enemies. The limited amount of story is portrayed as comic book style
still images, and is pushed along by some decent narration. The game has
a pretty unique sense of humor which I rather enjoyed -- like your
master initially dying by slipping in Orc blood and cracking his head
open on the stairs.

The sound effects are equally good, with
the traps all sounding great (and different from each other), and Orcs
squealing as they get torn asunder or lit on fire. The background music
was pretty thrilling during intense portions of the game, and more laid
back and mellow between waves of enemies and before starting. I really
enjoyed both the graphics and sound in Orcs Must Die!, and they really
added a lot to the already fun gameplay.

The replay value may
be a bit low since it's a single player game with a limited number of
fortresses to defend, but with so many different traps and weapons to
try out you can at least try out different combinations in different
levels for kicks and giggles. It looks like Orcs Must Die! 2 is
going to have a multiplayer co-op mode, which is one thing that I wish
this game would have had. I would have even settled for an endless mode
of some sort, where you could keep playing forever until you were
overrun by enemies. As it stands though, once you get all 5 skulls from
each level and all 28 Steam achievements there's really no
incentive to play further as you will have likely exhausted your
curiosity about different trap combinations by then. Still a really fun
game that will last for quite a while. A good value for the price,
especially if you catch it during a sale.